(December 20) -- I generally dislike writing "year
end" missives since I don't look at December to be much different
from January, especially if you live in Sudbury, Ontario where it only
gets colder from one month to the other. That said, a lot of people
have been wondering what's going to be changing about ESR in 2000 considering
how much it changed in 1999.

This year has been a big one for ESR. The number of people
reading all or part of the magazine has exploded by 40 per cent and
we went to a weekly schedule in June, our third anniversary. We've added
a number of new writers and sections to the magazine and finally stuck
with the same look to our front page for more than six months. Heck,
I even "came out" and began publishing this thing under my
own name after years of using Gord Gekko as a nomme du plumme.

So what's coming up for ESR? As traffic continues to grow
rapidly for the magazine, I'm keen to turn it into more of a community.
With that in mind, I'm in the early stages of testing forum software
which will be hosted on site. Readers will be able to discuss whatever
they like, whether it's material in ESR, ESR itself or any issue of
the day. Date of arrival: unknown

Also coming soon are on-line archives of previously published
material. Sometime this year -- hopefully -- we'll have the entire run
of this magazine on-line and searchable. Before that, however, ESR will
begin offering the previous month's issue in simple format -- no pictures,
merely the text of the article itself. Date of arrival: June 2000

As ESR gears up, ESR's Conservative Site of the Day may
be gearing down in the coming months. After two years on-line, the number
of sites left which could make the grade as a Site of the Day are getting
slim. Not enough new sites are going online to make possible to update
the site for much longer. Of course, I've said that before so you'll
probably continue seeing ESR's CSotD into 2001. Date of arrival: Unknown

Increased publishing schedule? Unknown

I'd like to thank some people who over the past year made
a big difference, chief among them Michael Miller of Quackgrass Press.
With infinite patience he's helped me out over the past year with any
number of things: advice on how to proceed with ESR, editing my articles,
warning me of potential mistakes, clearing up some of my foggy logic
or just providing me with some great conversation. Behind the scenes
Michael has been a tremendous help and I owe him a lot.

Writers are the key to any magazine and we had a whole
bunch of truly superb people contribute to ESR this year. Thanks goes
to (in rough order):

Thanks also goes to editor-at-large Steve Lendt, the people
at ViaNet, Todd Frawley, Fabian Hynes and Anthony Szwec for all of their
help in making this possible.

And thank you!

Thanks for reading,

Steven Martinovich

Meanwhile,
back at the ranch...

ESR wants you!

The rate of expansion here is frankly overwhelming and its soon time
to begin expanding the staff around here. Interested in getting on our
masthead? Want to volunteer writing, editing, whatever? Write us!

Visit our sister site

ESR's Conservative Site of the Day has been up since January 1,
spotlighting the best in digital conservatism every weekday. Up to 200
people a day now visit! If you're jonesing for a good conservative website,
make sure to visit it at http://www.enterstageright.com/site